


No Place Like Home

by AlastorGrim



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Harry Potter is a Little Shit, Kidnapping, Multi, No Bashing, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Slow Burn, Tom Riddle | Voldemort Adopts Harry Potter, Young Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-13 02:23:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17479421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/pseuds/AlastorGrim
Summary: After Voldemort died, he was spat back out into the year 1987. With a bit more insight than he’d had ten years ago, Voldemort decided to take in the very brat that killed him in the first place to avoid death yet again. Yes, that...may have not been the smartest decision either.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I see a lot of Harry adopts Tom fics and not enough Voldemort adopts Harry fics, so here we are!

‘ _Well_ ,’ The terror of Lord Voldemort thought idly as he floated in the thick blackness of the afterlife. ‘ _That was unexpected._ ’

Perhaps not as unexpected as he would’ve liked, but it wasn’t like he was going to admit that anytime soon.

Other wisps of silvery light slid sluggishly past him, and he had to wonder where he was. He knew he was dead, of course, and after all that he’d done, he didn’t exactly have high expectations for anything like the pearly gates. Maybe this was purgatory, or the dreaded, fabled hell. However he didn’t feel like he was suffering much. If anything, he felt...calm. A radical change from his volatile state from before, where his moods swung so dangerously fast from one to the other he’d almost given himself whiplash. So easily angered, so easily disturbed and unsettled, he hadn’t had a moment of peace in many, _many_ years.

A consequence of ripping his soul beyond repair, he was sure.

But perhaps, because of that, he had bypassed heaven, hell, and valhalla entirely, and now was in some sort of limbo, and those other lights among the darkness were the other splices of his soul, other pieces of what was once Tom Riddle before their protective containers were destroyed. A thought that should've made him angry, surely, but he felt nothing but calm. Perhaps he did not have a body to feel emotions with any longer; though even as a wraith in Albania he had been able to rage and stew and plot as he searched for another vessel.

He regretted that. All the time he’d wasted, whether it be plotting useless revenge or forcing his followers into submission or obsessing over a teenage boy, that he could have used to further his goals instead. If he were to admit any of his mistakes—and it was a miracle in itself that he was admitting that he made them in the first place—it would be that one. To be nothing but honest with himself, here in the heavy blackness of his personal purgatory, he forced himself to accept that had he not been so distracted by his quest for the Potter boy’s death, he could have accomplished his goals in a couple of years.

There was a light. A light much brighter than that of the wisps beside him bloomed into being up ahead, like an inverted black hole. He felt himself being pulled towards it, and wondered if this was death after all. For all his fear of death in life, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

A slow warmth stole over him, as inescapable and complete as the calm, and what was left of his being became light and airy. The light before him seemed to pull away the heady darkness as it tugged him in.

And he realized that he did, in fact, _feel_. As could he see, whether he had physical eyes to look with or not. He felt himself stretch as he disappeared into the light at last, and he saw an open expanse of blue above him, tufts of whiteness strewn haphazardly across it.

Then he was falling.

A faceful of dirt, with no landing, and he gasped to fill his abruptly renewed lungs. Fingers, hands, arms—he hacked out a cough and pushed himself up on trembling limbs, stunned. His fingers dug into soft grass, rocks bit into his knees, and the taste of damp earth lingered on his palate.

He was in the forest, the sky clear above him, the sun a dearly missed heat on his skin as he knelt there and stared at his hands. He was completely starkers, but he ignored that little fact in favor of studying the pale tone of his skin, no longer gray and bone white, and the healthy layer of fat and muscle tensed beneath his skin. With shaking hands he reached up and felt at his face. Lips, a nose, eyebrows. A little further up revealed a thick head of hair. All things he hadn’t realized he missed.

Despite all of that, as impossible as it was, he knew he had a more pressing issue. Somehow, someway, he was alive. More alive than he had been before his death. Truly, blessedly alive.

Tom Marvolo Riddle stared up at the sky, and _breathed_.

 

{•}

 

“BOY!”

Harry yelped and sat up abruptly, only to bang his head on the lowest stair. “C-Coming!” He hissed and rubbed his forehead as he scrambled off his cot. He stumbled out of his cupboard and down the hall, his hand shaking slightly as he pushed open the door to the kitchen. He was immediately presented with his Uncle’s fleshy, purple face scrunched up in frustration.

“Why,” Vernon seethed, his mustache and chins quivering. “Did I just receive a call from the principal telling me that you climbed onto the roof of the school building?”

Harry began to shift from foot to foot, anxious and antsy, ready to bolt at any given moment. He had heard once that you didn’t need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the person with you. Uncle Vernon very much reminded him of a bear sometimes. And Harry was very fast. He had outrun his cousin Dudley on more than one occasion, and he had no doubt that he could do it again if need be.

“I-I didn’t!” Harry stammered out quickly as his Uncle’s face turned an alarming shade of puce. “I didn’t climb up there. I was just—just running, and I jumped, and I-I just _landed_ on the roof.” He tried to explain, because that was the only explanation he had. Having remembered that bears could sense fear, Harry stood up a little straighter and puffed out his chest to look bigger.

“You...just landed there.” Vernon said it in such a tone that Harry went abruptly pale.

“I didn’t do anything!” Harry argued with as much strength as he could muster, even while he felt like running. “It was like—”

“DON’T SAY IT!” Vernon bellowed furiously. His torso heaved with rage and he directed a fat, trembling finger at the hall. “Cupboard...no meals... _now_.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Now!” Vernon roared, and Harry had the good sense to turn and bolt then.

He skidded down the hall and banged his hip on the cupboard door as he scrambled back inside it and shut the door behind him. He crouched on top of his cot on all fours, grip white-knuckled on the edge of his mattress, his heart beating a tattoo against his ribs as his Uncle stomped by, locked his cupboard, and stormed up the stairs.

Dust fell lightly on Harry’s head, but he continued to stare with wide eyes and a racing pulse at his door as if Vernon would suddenly open it and wrench him out to yell at him some more. Maybe he’d gone to get The Belt. Harry hated The Belt.

Eventually, as the sunlight faded and there was little to no sound from above him, Harry gradually relaxed. He let out a sigh and released his death grip on the edge of his cot, then sat back on his haunches feeling boneless. His stomach rumbled irritably and he grimaced. He had only eaten a piece of burnt toast and a few crackers today, and he’d been sent to bed without dinner, along with the promise of no food for however long his Uncle Vernon decided he needed to be punished.

Harry James Potter plucked a spider off his pillow, curled up on his side, and wished he were anywhere else.


	2. Pay No Attention

Harry was locked away in his cupboard for a week and a half. Every morning and every night he was let out to use the bathroom and relieve himself, but as the days passed by with little water and even less food, those needs began to abate.

The cupboard was dark and dusty like always, and Harry struggled with boredom for the first couple of days before he could no longer think past the ache in his stomach. Day five of his punishment had Harry laying on his back on his cot, sprawled out and unable to move as he hazily watched black spots dance across his vision. The occasional spider scuttled over his arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to try and brush them off.

Every breath felt like a momentous effort, and by the time he was finally released into the outside world again, Harry barely got himself up and out of the cupboard. Aunt Petunia spat his list at him and shoved a bruised apple and a piece of stale bread at him before ushering him outside.

Harry pocketed the apple and nibbled at his bread, unbearably hungry but undeniably nauseous. He got to work on the garden like his Aunt wanted. He pulled weeds until his fingers bled, and then wrangled with the hose to water them. The spray accidentally hit the windows at first, and Harry ducked down whenever his Aunt screeched at him that he would be cleaning those later as well.

“Well I clean everything else, so I might as well,” Harry grumbled bitterly under his breath as he finished watering the plants. The bread smeared up against his cuts when he took it out again, and Harry grimaced at the blood now stained and leaking into the wheat. He polished it off anyway, because when one went without food for as long as Harry did, one learned not to be picky.

At some point between his weeding and watering, Harry became aware of the feeling of eyes on his back. It sent a chill up his spine, but there wasn’t much he could do but ignore it. 

When Aunt Petunia wasn’t looking, Harry took sips from the hose and tried his best to ignore the metallic aftertaste. The water settled his stomach a bit, and his nausea abated enough for him to consider the apple in his pocket. He ultimately decided against eating it, as he was fairly sure that he wouldn’t be getting anything else for lunch. Best ration what he had.

He finished up by trimming the hedges, washed the windows, and dug up the overgrown grass around the legs of the bench, before Aunt Petunia called him inside.

“I have a phone call to make. The book is on the counter—try not the break anything.” She snapped as she shoved him towards te stove where she had a pot of water boiling. She went off to make her phone call and left him alone.

Harry huffed softly and pulled out the foldable stool from between the fridge and the counter, and propped it open in front of the stove. To the left, his Aunt had propped up her cookbook to show the page on some type of soup she liked to make for Dudley when he was sick. Dudley had apparently had the flu for the past few days, and it seemed his Uncle had explained Harry’s prolonged absence from school away with a similar excuse, which was how Dudley had gotten sick in the first place. Harry couldn’t help but feel a bit bitter, though it didn’t surprise him. He was used to being blamed for things. 

Running his eyes over the ingredients, Harry clambered up on top of the counter to open the cabinets. The spice cabinet doubled as Dudley’s snack cabinet, so as Harry pulled out the sage and pepper, he stared longingly at the box of fancy cookies towards the back. He couldn’t steal any, as Dudley likely counted them.

The crisps however...

Harry took a discreet look around the kitchen and listened hard for footsteps. Aunt Petunia was in the living room, busy with her phone call, Dudley was upstairs, and Uncle Vernon wouldn’t be home until six. He nabbed a bag and hurriedly stuffed it into the saggy pocket of his shorts. It crinkled softly, but didn’t give him away otherwise. He climbed carefully down from the counter to grab the tomatoes and start on the soup. Tomatoes, onions, three cups of broth, a pinch of sage and half a tablespoon of salt later, the soup was done. Harry continued to stir it slowly, just in case his Aunt came in a decided it wasn’t good enough.

It took half an hour for the soup to be done, and by then Aunt Petunia had finished her phone call and shooed Harry away from the stove to go clean the living room and set the table for dinner. It took an hour to clean the living room to his Aunt's standards, and his shoulders ached by the end of it. 

Harry finished setting the table just as Dudley came waddling down the stairs. Vernon would be home any minute, so Aunt Petunia shoved a bowl of--no, not soup, just broth--at him and told him to eat quickly. 

He gulped it down with a sigh. He halfway wanted to lick the bowl clean but knew it would just get him in trouble. Washing his bowl, he put it away and crept back into his cupboard. His Aunt locked it behind him, and Harry knew it wouldn't open until morning. He had school tomorrow, which, while not ideal, was still better than being home all day. And with Dudley sick, there would be no Harry Hunting, so Harry could spend the day in peace.

Dinner was a rather loud affair in the Dursley house, each of them trying to boast over the others' achievements, even with Dudley's stuffy nose. Harry waited until Vernon sat down and began to complain about his day, before taking out the bag of crisps and popping them open. He ate quickly and quietly, though less quickly and less quietly than he had the broth. The crisps were salty and dry, but they were heaven to his stomach. 

The bag was snack sized, however, and was empty all too quickly. Dinner was still in affect, so Harry carefully smoothed out the bag, hid it beneath his mattress, and tried to go to sleep. 

 

{·}

 

School was a disaster. 

His favorite teacher, Ms. Wulbeig, had been very down that day, and as a result she wasn't paying much attention when Piers punched Harry in the nose during class. But a girl had screamed when his nose started to bleed, and Ms. Wulbeig jolted up and ran over to help him up off the floor.

Only, Harry hadn't been able to see very well, because his eyes were all watered up and his glasses had broken again, and so when Ms. Wulbeig (who was a rather large woman) rushed over and picked him up, he panicked. Something sparked off in his chest and suddenly several students were laughing at Me. Wulbeig and pointing fingers rudely.

Harry had somehow turned her wig a vivid blue color.

Ms. Wulbeig had yelled at him, angier than she'd ever been with him, and the more she yelled, the brighter the blue got. Eventually she just demanded that he go to the headmistress and tell her what he'd done. 

His eyes blurry with tears and glasses barely held together with his hands, he stumbled his way out of his classroom and down the hall to the head office. He hadn't meant to turn her hair blue, it had just happened! He didn't even know how he did it!

Harry tried to tell Mrs. Rommele that, but shs just yelled at him too. She wrote him a slip and told him to take it home and bring it back signed. Then she sent him back to glass, when Ms. Wulbeig glared at him for the remainder of glass. It looked like his days of having a nice teacher were over as well.

He walked home that day, head hung and glasses taped even more thickly on the bridge. He was in _so_ much trouble. 

Forging Uncle Vernon's signature was out, but maybe his Aunt would sign it. Sure, she would yell at him too, but that was hardly new. Aunt Petunia was always the lesser of two evils, when it came to Harry being punished for doing something freakish.

And he had just gotten out of his cupboard yesterday!

But Harry's luck just didn't want to turn, it seemed, because today was his Uncle's day off, and Aunt Petunia had apparently gone over to have tea with one of the neighbors. Harry really, really didn't want to, but unless he wanted to be in even more trouble, he had too.

He crept into the living room where Uncle Vernon was watching television and tapped on his arm meekly. 

"What is it, boy? I thought I told you not to bother me." Vernon growled without taking his eyes off the television.

He hadn't, but Harry didn't feel the need to point that out. He presented the note to Uncle Vernon and stepped back hastily, lip caught nervously between his teeth.

His Uncle took one look at the note and _exploded_.

"DIDN'T I JUST TEACH YOU THIS, BOY!" Vernon roared as he shoved to his feet and whirled on Harry, slip clutched in a reddening, fat fist. Harry scrambled backwards and tumbled into the kitchen, his Uncle thundering after him. "Your freakishness will not pollute this house! Will NOTHING get it into your skull?" Vernon barked as he grabbed the nearest projectile and threw it at Harry. The cup shattered against the wall as Harry ducked, narrowly missing it. He dodged away from another, turned--

_CLANG_

Pain burst across the side of Harry's face as the pot from last night's dinner crashed into the side of his head. He cried out, then shrieked as hot soup sloshed over the sides and onto his skin. They must've bedn warming it up for Dudley. The bottom of the pot was searing as it dropped onto Harry's legs. He jerked them out from beneath it with a sob and curled up in the corner, thoroughly chastised. 

He was drenched in sclading soup, his ears were ringing, and several parts of his body were burning like someone had lit fire beneath his skin. He hiccuped and blinked away tears as he heard his Uncle stomp closer, recoiled into the wall, a sob caught in his throat.

A meaty hand fisted in his hair and dragged him over the shards of glass on the floor towards the hall, still shouting insults and obscenities that Harry couldn't hear anymore, but he could guess. He gasped in air and scrabbled at the hand in his hair--it hurt, it hurt, it _hurts_ \--only to be thrown roughly into his cupboard and locked in.

"--while I figure out what to do with you!" He heard Uncle Vernon shout before walking away.

Harry grit his teeth against the choppy hiccups and sobs and coughs that wanted to choke their way out of his throat, a high-pitched whine of agony emitting instead. He curled up on the dusty floor, muscles spasming, unable to move, and regretted coming home.

He couldn't but feel like he wasn't meant for this. That he wasn't supposed to be here. It was a stupid, silly notion, he knew.

Where else could he go?

**Author's Note:**

> Backup fic. Less likely to get deleted. Same author, different name.


End file.
